


H is for Hieroglyphs

by Lokei



Series: Stargate SG-1 Alphabet Soup Contributions [7]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alphabet Soup Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-09
Updated: 2008-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is the submission that didn’t get used for sg_fignewton’s Daniel Alphabet Soup</p>
    </blockquote>





	H is for Hieroglyphs

**Author's Note:**

> This is the submission that didn’t get used for sg_fignewton’s Daniel Alphabet Soup

The days he’s in a position to appreciate the irony, Daniel finds it amusing that given the number of times he’s apparently or actually died, not once has anyone asked what he wants on his tombstone. Perhaps it’s due to his bad habit of dying off world or refusing to do the decent thing and leave a body behind—but even if it’s a cenotaph Daniel knows what he wants it to say.

Once upon a time, he envisioned it written on papyrus and tucked under his arms as he joined Sha’re under the sands of Abydos. That is no longer possible, and on his bitter days he wonders if the Universe at large will ever let him rest, anyway. Usually, though, he thinks that having spent so much of his life dreaming of it, digging around it, living under it, and walking through a ring of it, he deserves at least a stone.

Perhaps after he’s gone, his work will speak for him, will speak for itself. Perhaps before he goes, they’ll take the Stargate program public and the original SG-1 will be as well known as Christopher Columbus or Lewis and Clark. Daniel does not hold out a lot of hope for either of these eventualities.

And rather like Thomas Jefferson, Daniel doesn’t want his equivalent of the presidency inscribed on his tombstone. It isn’t that he’s not proud of opening the Stargate—he is, it’s just that, no matter what Jack might claim on Daniel’s behalf, he’s never felt that that was his achievement alone. He would never have gotten the first team home without Sha’re, never gotten to go through again without Jack, never have become who he is now without Sam and Teal’c and the years they have all shared together, good and bad.

So it seems reasonable to him, sitting in his office on a late Wednesday night or maybe it’s early Thursday morning, to pick up the gravity-free space pen Sam gave him, and some of the creamy parchment paper Jack signs requisitions for just because he knows Daniel likes the feel of it under his fingers, even though there’s some diplomacy cover story they both know is a total fig leaf—and pen with sure, practiced ease the elegant figures which no scholar of Budge will ever accurately understand.

He seals them in an envelope and writes in English on the front, “This is how I want to be remembered.”

Before he sticks it in a drawer, his fingers trace the memory of the hieroglyphs within.

_I am Daniel Jackson. Husband, friend, explorer. I walked through the Stargate and found the heavens._


End file.
